Enlarge / Advocates gather on April 17, 2023, in Washington, DC, to call out tax prep firms like TurboTax-maker Intuit and H&R Block, and to support the Internal Revenue Service’s exploration of free tax filing. (credit: Getty Images | Tasos Katopodis )

The Internal Revenue Service yesterday announced details for a pilot of its free filing program for the 2024 tax season. People in 13 states “may be eligible to participate in the 2024 Direct File pilot, a new service that will provide taxpayers with the choice to electronically file their federal tax return directly with the IRS for free,” the IRS said.

The pilot “will allow the IRS to identify issues and make changes prior to any potential large-scale launch in the future,” the agency said. It will assess customer support and technology needs, and help “evaluate the costs, benefits and operational challenges associated with providing a voluntary Direct File option to taxpayers.” That includes testing fraud detection and integration with state systems.

Pilot eligibility is for those with “relatively simple returns” because it “is limited by the types of income, tax credits and deductions that the product can initially support.” The IRS said it invited all 50 states, but only some are participating at first:

Enlarge (credit: Amazon)

Amazon has a plan to deploy 100,000 electric vans to its delivery fleet by 2030. At the rate it’s going, that might happen a little sooner. On Thursday, it announced that it now has 10,000 Rivian electric delivery vans in service—up from 5,000 earlier this July.

Rivian’s big order from Amazon was placed in 2019 as part of the online retailer and web service provider’s plan to become carbon neutral by the year 2040. Earlier that year Amazon was an investor in a $700 million financing round for the EV startup, which makes electric SUVs and pickup trucks in addition to the Amazon electric delivery vans.

At the time, Jeff Bezos wanted all 100,000 Rivian vans on the road by 2024, but even before the coronavirus pandemic landed in March 2020, that had been revised to 2030. The first Rivian EDVs went into service in 2021.

Enlarge / Artist’s depiction of Neanderthals after taking down a lion. (credit: Julio Lacerda/NLD)

Neanderthal hunters living 48,000 years ago in what is now Germany killed a large cave lion in what might be the earliest example of lion hunting yet known, according to a recent paper published in the journal Scientific Reports. Gabriele Russo of the University of Tubingen and co-authors based their conclusions on a close forensic analysis of a cave lion skeleton showing evidence of injury by a wooden spear. They also examined recently discovered cave lion claw bones showing evidence of having been skinned around 190,000 years ago.

Now extinct, cave lions were apex predators, larger than today’s mountain lions. They were frequently depicted in Paleolithic art, and their body parts were used as ornaments, according to the authors—part of a long-standing relationship between carnivores and hominids that shaped cultural behaviors. Although it’s known that hominins have been interacting with lions since the animals first arrived in Europe, less is known about the relationships between carnivores and hominims like Neanderthals from earlier periods.

Neanderthals were expert hunters known to kill bears and other carnivores, but evidence for them interacting with cave lions has remained scarce. A pair of lion fibula from the Middle Paleolithic found in eastern Iberia with cut marks indicates the lion was butchered, while other lion bones found in Southwestern France from the same period had cut marks indicative of skinning. This latest paper focused on a re-evaluation of a medium-sized male cave lion skeleton found at Siegsdorf, in Central Germany, in the 1980s.

Enlarge / A view of the Moon from Chandrayaan 3 before landing. (credit: ISRO)

With that milestone now possibly set to occur in 2025, Modi has set his sights higher and farther. After a high-level meeting this week to assess progress on the Gaganyaan mission, Modi’s office released a statement outlining the country’s ambitions in space over the next two decades.

Enlarge (credit: living_images | E+)

On Monday, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that Google search data evidence retrieved by Denver police using a controversial keyword search warrant can be used to prosecute a teenager who has been charged with deadly arson.

Gavin Seymour, the teenager accused of arson, had moved to suppress the evidence, asking the court to consider whether keyword warrants violate constitutional rights protecting against unlawful, overly broad searches and seizures.

This was the first constitutional challenge to the legitimacy of keyword warrants—which operate in the complete opposite manner of traditional warrants and do not require police to first identify a suspect before conducting a search—but the judge writing the majority opinion, William W. Hood, declined to definitively decide whether keyword search warrants are unconstitutional.